The answer to the riddle. Who could have committed the crimes he had? Only a soul who had lost all identity. He was a hollow vehicle capable of channeling energy from the bowels of the earth. She half believed him possessed. He looked as if a demon sat inside him now. His pale face shone with a purple light. Perhaps a trick of reflection. In the distance she saw a firework burn to nothing in the black sky. The demon withdrew—the man before her merely looked exhausted.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He glanced up. “Why are you sorry?”

“Because I have learned your secret. You lie.”

“We all lie. No one more than a woman.”

She stood. “I can’t argue with you. I have lied to you.”

He shook the gun angrily. “Sit back down!”

“No. I have to finish what I came here to do.” Taking a step forward, she picked up the duct tape she had dropped when he had stolen the gun from her holster. She hardly noticed when he raised the gun toward her head and put pressure on the trigger.

“You know I’m not afraid to kill,” he said.

“That gun belongs to your brother. It’s not loaded.” Reaching around to the back of her belt—beneath her shirt—she pulled out her own gun. “But this one is.”

He froze. “How?”

“I spoke to your doctor last night. He insisted you were completely paralyzed. But he was pompous and I didn’t trust him. I read more about the seventh cervical vertebrae and learned what you just explained—it is the cutoff point for feeling in the arms. When I was here last, I noticed you had kept your weight-lifting equipment. Specifically, I noticed you had kept the equipment that developed upper body strength.”

He lowered his gun. “Clever.”

“Thank you.” She tore off a piece of duct tape. “We can do this the easy way or we can do it the hard way.”

He was indignant. “You’re not going to kill me.”

“Wrong. I am going to kill you.”

He snorted. “You’ll go to jail.”

“You wanted me to go to jail for life. You had your brother steal the gun from my apartment. The same day I was supposed to come here to put you out of your misery, Scott was going to shoot Julie in the heart with my gun. Scott would have been here to stop me from hurting you, but I would still have been blamed for the death of your wife. The poor, obsessed FBI agent who couldn’t get over what the Acid Man had done to her. The girl just lost it. Naturally, the prosecution would have had access to all the records of my travels to the Midwest. All files closed, huh?”

“You cannot get away with killing me. You’ll be the first one they’ll suspect.”

“I’ll make it look like a suicide.”